The objective of this study was to find out the optimal sampling strategy for contemporaneous multistage sampling of age and length structures of trawl catches. Samples were taken from a roach (Rutilus rutilus) stock of Lake Vesijarvi, southern Finland. Two-stage sampling proved to be superior to three-stage sampling (i.e. subsamples from the trawl catches are unnecessary). Assuming that all the age and length groups are equally important, the optimal strategy is to sample 34 fish from each of 46 loads. Compared with the present scheme (500 fish from each of 10 loads), this design cuts down the total variance of the estimated proportions of different age and length groups to about one third. An age-length key was used when estimating the proportions of the age.groups. The benefits of the applied age-length key were obvious. The estimates of the proportions of different age groups were more accurate than those obtained with age readings only. Increasing the fraction of age-determined fish increases the costs, diminishes the optimal number of samples, and consequently increases the variance of the estimated proportions of different groups.
